Day 2 at Algodonales

Today was a slow start as it seems it often is here. We went out to the Westerly take off on Lijar the mountain that overlooks Algodonales and sat around a good while before the conditions were flyable. Once everything got warmed up nicely and the thermals were coming through we watched a couple of gliders launch and some were even maintaining height. At this point Neil who is always the keenest to get airborne in our group launched and started gaining height. Slowly all the group got airborne and on my turn to launch I made a hash of things by failing to brake the glider as it came overhead. Unfortunately as the conditions are so different it took several attempts until I was in the air.

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Initially when I was airborne I was struggling to even maintain height and I was concious of the little height I had above the small lump of hill in front of take off that is the height marker we use to decide whether we will make the landing field. It took a while of flying in (and often out) of lift in 'S' shapes before I had scratched enough lift to get me clear of the hill and be able to do full 360 turns in the thermals. Slowly and with the help of some of the many vultures that live in these parts I managed to gain height and eventually I was 1500 feet above take off.

I gained so much height that I started to get a little uncomfortable, this is of course the opposite of what is deemed safe as the more air between you and the ground there is the more time you will have to sort out any problems. Up high I seemed to be getting rocked about a little bit more than I did lower down so I decided to make my way over to the landing field.

After a spending some time loosing height I landed in the landing field. It wasn't until I had packed up the wing that I realised how tiring thermalling is, it is physically and mentally much more demanding than the ridge soaring I usually do back home.

Today I reached the milestone of completing 10 hours air time. This means that I can officially remove the red ribbon from my harness that indicates to other pilots I am a very low airtime pilot. I wont remove the ribbon until I at least get home but it is another task checked off.